The portrait and the painter

Sam Fleischacker’s ‘philosophical companion’ to Wealth of Nations (WN) reflects its author’s long and reflective engagement with Smith’s thought. There is much in the book which Smith scholars will find useful, and indeed indispensable. Many of Smith’s perspectives are reformulated with exemplary clarity; key puzzles in his oeuvre are puzzled out more successfully than by past commentators; and some key misformulations by leading scholars are set aright. For all of these we should be grateful, the duties of gratitude being, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) tells us, ‘perhaps the most sacred of all those which the beneficent virtues prescribe to us’.